ABBEY ROAD 50th ANNIVERSARY: 4 CD's NOBODY REALLY NEEDS AND FEW WILL ACTUALLY BUY

It was a GREAT DAY, August 8th. It wasn't swelteringly hot in London, so people could forget about climate change. No burqa-wearing terrorists were driving people off London Bridge and howling about Allah. And with the enthusiasm of watching four lame-ass impersonators walk across a street, there wasn't even a murmur of "What'll be with Brexit?" 

Hooray, it was a day to go back fifty fucking years and pretend the world hasn't changed. 

The world HAS changed. And forever, not for better. Two of the Beatles are even gone, and few record stores have remained. In other words, where WILL you buy this fucking 4 CD box set? Oh, from AMAZON and not in the real world? And will YOU PERSONALLY be buying it, or getting a torrent download from Demonoid, or a link from some brain-dead asshole in Holland, Sweden or Croatia for whom English is a second language and UK and USA economy not a concern? 

What's changed musically is that DRAKE now has broken most of the chart records and sales records The Beatles owned. And if they haven't, oh, Whitney Houston did. Or Lady Gaga. Or Madonna. Or it'll happen the next time Adele opens her fat yap, or the next time Viley Virus sticks out her ugly tongue, winks, twerks, and lets a cough-load out of her mouth, anus and vagina at the same time.

A bit too vivid? 

Even with Paul Krassner gone, it's possible to be a REALIST. This set will only be bought by a few thousand aging die-hards who think their hearses have luggage racks. They'll insist that Giles Martin has somehow breathed new life into the remixes (or argue that he didn't) and, after a while, wonder why alternate takes just aren't THAT interesting. 

As for the Millennials and anyone under 40, how do you even explain "classic rock" or why they should care about "Abbey Road?" That's like the previous generation trying to insist that Big Band Music was the hippest thing and "You really should listen to my Glenn Miller records, and the Dorsey Brothers. My god, BIG BANDS and not just a few idiots playing guitar!" 

Times change. It takes determination NOT to change with the times, or to cheer the event of yesterday (when people gazed at imposters on Abbey Road and thought their troubles were far away).  Reports in the papers included interviews with pea-brains who actually boasted about flying in from halfway around the world JUST to stand on a street and insist "Abbey Road" is a great album (it was) and rock and roll will never die (it's terminal, just like the planet) and that they were delirious with joy just to be a part of it (they are idiots). 

FACT: "Abbey Road" was, like every Beatles album, astonishing at the time. If you grew up with it, it's still nice to listen to once in a while. But after 50 years, and hundreds and hundreds of plays, not every track still holds up, and the percentage of duds is much higher than on "Sgt. Pepper" or "Revolver," right? Right. 

 There are 17 tracks on “Abbey Road” and that includes the scraps of filler that formed the so-called “medley" on side two. Fact: it was a hash of odds and ends and unfinished tunes that worked for anyone with a low attention span.  Why they didn’t just pull out rejects such as “Not Guilty” or “Teddy Boy,” who knows. At least "Mary Jane" wasn't on there. 

Time to take a look at what still shines on, and what we usually skip when we can get our wrinkly fingers on the remote control....

1.    “Come Together” remains a mess. A good mess (not a "hot mess" as the flamboyant gays love to say). Lennon, who often scorned Macca for not polishing or concentrating on his lyrics, tosses everything into this, and most of it is gibberish. Still, after 50 years the music is still cool rockin' blues and the song is so good that even without Beatles production, it's enjoyable. Lots of cover versions around. Hell, even some chick with an acoustic guitar and a fake blues delivery can do well with it. Hello, Jilly Riley (and show a little more boob next time, and ditch the hat): 

2.    “Something” was so pretty even the crooners of the day covered it. Why not, George actually uses the word “woos," which was corny even when sung by a stripe-suited banjo-playing vaudevillian in 1913. Hare-Hare-Harrison's spiritual guitar makes it less of a load of treacle. “I don’t want to leave her now. You know I believe and how.” Gosh, the man’s couplets were a rival to McKuen, huh?

3.     “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” is probably the most hated song on the album, so it’s defended here. It’s the ILL FOLKS blog, after all. Macca is often chided for writing childish melodies, Music Hall nonsense and nursery-level lyrics. Well, “Obla Di Obla Da” to YOU all. The fact is, this is a VERY sick song. There’s a sly suggestion, that studying metaphysical or pataphysical science still can’t prepare one for the surprises in life, like senseless murder.  Just why our ever-smiling Paulie took such joy in writing about killings, we may never know. His own vague helter-skelter explanation:

    "'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' is analogy for when something goes wrong out of the blue, as it so often does, as I was beginning to find out at that time in my life. I wanted something symbolic of that, so to me it was some fictitious character called Maxwell with a silver hammer. I don't know why it was silver, it just sounded better than Maxwell's hammer. It was needed for scanning. We still use that expression now when something unexpected happens….In the past I may have written tongue-in-cheek, like 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer', and dealt with matters of fate in a kind of comical, parody manner. It just so happens in this batch of songs I would look at these subjects and thought it was good for writing. If it's good enough to take to your psychiatrist, it's good enough to make a song of."

For the record, Paul’s band mates ALL hated the song. John “hated it,” mostly for the same reason Ringo disliked it. They had to do too many takes. Ringo called it “the worst session ever…the worst track we ever had to record. It went on for fucking weeks.” George was the snarkiest:  "Sometimes Paul would make us do these really fruity songs. I mean, my God, 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' was so fruity.” 

Let's break up the text with a few more YOUTUBE items. "Mona Lisa Twins" not only offer a kind of idiot retro 20’s version of the song, but make SURE it’s almost unbearable by actually having “Maxwell” appear in the guise of a fucking CLOWN MIME. More revealing costumes, girls, and shoot the mime. 

There are Beatles outtakes of the song that are even more annoying than the finished product. Perhaps there will be five of them on the fabulous 4 CD Box set. But for lameness, there's the Steve Martin cover, which was actually produced by George Martin. 

Martin, who managed to get the best out of Peter Sellers and the Goons, couldn’t seem to get a damn thing out of Steve Martin. Most of it is recited rather than sung, and not in his “wild and crazy” style. Steve did a decent job with the dentist song in “Little Shop of Horrors” a few years later, but here, he doesn't seem to know how to handle the camp or black humor of Macca's ditty. 

 
Lastly,  if we take this song as merely a vicarious naughty-schoolboy ditty about wishing to murder various enemies, and having idiot girls cheer about it ("Maxwell must go free") then it wouldn't be a surprise if the 4 CD set gets banned for encouraging school shootings. Hell, if "Helter Skelter" was considered an evil track, what about this? Oooooh....

4- 5   “Oh Darling” is just a brainless rave-up and “Octopus’s Garden” would’ve been an embarrassment on a Muppets album. Again, we enjoyed these, to some degree or other, for nearly 50 years. That's a good run for what Millennials would call audio diarrhea.

6.    “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” is the longest track, a seven minute exercise in obsession. It moves from a Lennon experiment in minimalist lyrics to a monstrous, literally heavy musical monster-stomp. You can easily imagine somebody fucking Adele to this track. It remains great. But try explaining it to some high school dick who is into rap or a high school twat who loves Taylor Swift. Rock is dead, but you can shake the house, grandpa, by playing this one LOUD.

7-8     Two dreary tracks; “Here Comes the Sun” is just about the weakest example of sunshine music you’ll find. “Good Day Sunshine” it is not. “Here comes the sun. And I say it’s all right.” Thanks, George, for another toss-away couplet. And people complained about Macca? PS, if the sun came and you DIDN’T think it was all right, what the fuck could you do about it? 

As for “Because,” we have “Because the world is round it turns me on,” which shows that taking a lot of drugs can be a bad thing. What still saves it on repeat listenings, even after 50 years, is the unusual Beatles harmonies. Guys, you need not keep gasping about the fucking Everly Brothers. You out-numbered them and this is damn good. Lennon claimed the melody was “Moonlight Sonata” played backwards by Yoko. Or something like that. "Yoko helped The Beatles." Tattoo that on your tush. 

9.    “You Never Give Me Your Money” is still lively, juxtaposing a wistful complaint with Elvis swagger. You might almost think this song has a message. Oh the magic feeling. Know where to go?

10   “Sun King” is wearisome drivel.  It just is. It was always a patience-trying track. In fact it was annoying in two languages. 

11-12-13   The medley of unfinished songs all remind me of “Maggie May” on “Let it Be.” Meaning: “Where’s the rest of it?” The answer is these were songs with one good image and nowhere to take it. “She came in through the bathroom window" didn’t yield a good song to go with it. (Unlike Dylan’s “Please crawl out your window…”). So all Macca could do was scrambled-egg more lyrics and then toss this clip-on-tie onto the clown suit inhabited by twin freaks Polythene Pam and Mean Mr. Mustard. Both songs have Lennon picking up and tossing away Judy and Punch after a brief examination and put-down on each. 

14-15-16   Sort of paired together, these snippets ALMOST seem to make sense. You may be fitfully unaware or apathetic in your “Golden Slumbers” but boy, you’re gonna “Carry That Weight.” Then it's time to shake your head and do a rave-up, and it even inspires Ringo to do that “drum solo." I know it was ridiculed at the time, and some still laugh at it, but it remains the only drum solo that most of you can easily do yourselves. Catchy, isn't it? 

Caveat. Not EVERYBODY can do that simple drum solo. It CAN be fucked up. Proof?  

Just why amateurs feel compelled to put their embarrassing videos on YouTube for EVERYONE to cringe at...

The nice two minute rock riff of "The End" ends with that grandiose, oh-so-profound “And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.” That explains everything. 

Perhaps the 4 CD set will have a few surprises "Purple Chick" and a hundred other bootleggers have missed. MAYBE there's a take of "Sun King" that doesn't suck like a sea-sick eel. More likely, the outtakes will be as dismal a revelation as “Suicide,” the song that was merely a brief snippet on McCartney’s first solo album and then got a disappointing official release on the re-issue.

Will the 4 CD box set have several two-minute rehearsals takes on "Her Majesty?" Half a minute as an impudent little closer on "Abbey Road" was cute enough.

Irony: “Her Majesty” is STILL alive while half The Beatles are dead. And she still doesn’t have a lot to say.